Some thoughts from TPM

Hopefully, Crooks and Liars got the segment, but if not David Dreier used his appearance tonight towards the end of MSNBC's Hardball to make a bid for top bamboozler on every issue you can think of. According to Dreier, Congress today is nothing like it was in the early 1990's--the Republicans have seriously cleaned it up and made it an idyllic place where everyone works together and has their say. He spoke ominously of Democrats who he was just sure are spending many a sleepless night worrying about the day their close working relationship with Jack Abramoff. Thankfully, he said he wouldn't name names. I thought that quite magnanimous, don't you? And the new reform package the Republicans have proposed will be a model of ethical and moral reform, the likes of which will make us all joyful to be Americans! He was very regretful, however, that he was just plumb unaware that the Democrats had proposed their own reforms. Must've been a happy coincidence that Hastert timed the release of the R's proposals to hit the news exactly the day before.

Chris Matthews, of course, being the buffoon that he is played along and actually acted like Dreier had proposed real reform, helpfully pointing out that he'd noticed that the Republican reform package will ban lobbyists from buying congressmen drinks. Now that's an important piece of reform!